September 2005 Archives

The Japanese pronunciation of "r" is not the same as our pronunciation, and after a month of taking this class I still can't say it right. It's supposed to be more of a "d" sound, some sites I've read say more of an "l" sound. I usually get frustrated and just pronounce it as an r, but every time I do I can't help but think that I sound like Scooby Doo. Ra ri ru re ro?

Environmental Physiology This class is about how animals physiologically deal with their environments. So far I haven't really learned anything new yet. It's sort of like an intro to biology class mixed with a physiology class, both of which I've taken. But I like my teacher, Dr. Grafton. He gives good notes, lets us out of class early every day, studies monkeys in South America, and once stepped on a Fer-de-lance

Writing Intensive I'm taking this course along with Environmental Physiology. It's just a one credit hour course that I think is a University requirement to graduate. I have to write a 15-20 page research paper on any topic I choose as long as it deals with the class. As of now my topic is sex change in protogynous fish. Exciting, huh?

Organic Evolution This class is supposed to be about...evolution. So far it's been a class about politics and "what science really is". I find this class incredibly boring. All we do is take pages and pages of notes. My teacher, Dr. Hoeh, refuses to put notes online for us because "students won't come to class" if he does. I really don't learn anything while I'm physically in the class because I'm too busy copying six pages of notes off overheads. He also hands back our exams for us to keep, which means that 75% of the class have their friend's exams from last year, and he knows it! I think you can tell I'm not enjoying this class very much. It is in the Liquid Crystal building though, and the seats are super comfortable.

Wetland Ecology and Management Speaking of seats, this class has to be in the most uncomfortable class in the world. Luckily Ferenc teaches this class, so it's worth it. This is the first biology class that I've ever felt very unknowledgeable in. There are only about 12 students, and they're all super smart and have taken every plant course the school offers (a major part of the course deals with wetland flora). The only botany course I've ever taken was back in high school, so when we're out in the field identifying plants, I feel totally lost. Also, about half the students are grad students. The lab for this course is fantastic, we go on a field trip almost every lab. We all pile into a van and Ferenc drives us away to places like Triangle Lake Bog, and we walk around and identify plants, take soil samples, etc. It's great. The only bad thing about this course is the crazy insane project we have to do. Well, I think it's crazy at least. We have to find a wetland, collect and mount one plant specimen of every plant species in our wetland, make a list of all plant and animal taxa, fill out classification and delineation forms, and write a report! I've been having major problems with the crazy insane project so far, maybe I'll write about it later.

I started a wetlands set on Flickr that I'll be putting photos from our field trips in. Now you can finally see photos of Ferenc and photos of the fun stuff we do, like taking soil samples.

Japanese 1 Ahh, a foreign language class that I actually enjoy. I thought this class was going to be really hard, but it's really just a lot of work. We're learning to write all the Hiragana and Katakana syllables, and we should be learning some Kanji towards the end. It's really just like learning how to read and write again, with a different alphabet that that has 92+ syllables and thousands of characters. I'm really glad I dropped Spanish last year because Japanese is about a million times more interesting.

Here are some digital photos from Kelly and Seth's wedding this past Saturday.

There are also a few more over on Flickr.

• I've been incredibly busy since school started, hence the lack of updates. I thought my classes would be easier this semester, but they're not. Kory is even busier than I am. I never see him anymore. Really.
• Kory's sister, Kelly, is getting married this Saturday. I only have one dress (the one I wore to Rhonda and Alfred's wedding) and no shoes to match (I wore a pair of Katrina's shoes before.) So now I have to go shopping, and I know it's going to be impossible to find non-leather, non-sweatshop shoes that match. Maybe I'll just go barefoot, I'm sure Kelly would understand.
• My society finches had babies. Two little fuzzy brown baby finches. I really don't know much about taking care of them at all, just that I'm supposed to leave them alone and the mother and father will take care of everything. But the other day both of them were sitting at the bottom of the cage huddled together and I had no idea whether I was supposed to put them back in the nest or not. I didn't have time to sit around and watch to see if the parent's were going down to feed them, so I just scooped them up and put them back in the nest. The same thing happend the next day, so I scooped them up again and they haven't come out since.
• Nishi and Koichi had been pulling each other's fur out, so I had to go and buy another rabbit cage to separate them. So now I have four rabbit cages to clean (in addition to the other hundred bird and reptile cages). I guess one more cage isn't a big deal though. I was actually worried that Nishi would be too scared/skittish without Koichi there to "protect" her, but she seems to be doing good so far.
• I really like my Japanese class. The school bookstore finally got in the cd that goes along with our textbook, so now I actually have something productive I can do while driving two and a half hours every work day. Luckily it's completely dark when I go to work in the morning, and when I leave in the afternoon there's hardly anyone on the turnpike. Otherwise everyone would see me repeating, "Takai desu ne," over and over with a funny look on my face. That's my favorite line in the lesson I've been working on. It means "It's expensive!" and the way it's said on the cd is so funny.
• You can type your name in at the top of this page and it will show you your name in katakana.
• I have three mosquito bites on my neck and they're driving me crazy! I can't see them, but I know the whole back of my neck is probably a huge red swollen mass since I can't stop scratching them. When we first started going out in the field for my wetlands class, I would try to brush off every mosquito that landed on me, but now I've realized it's not even worth it. There are just way too many of them to even bother. That doesn't mean they don't distract me though. I'm amazed at how Ferenc, my teacher, handles it. It's like they're not even touching him! He can stand there and talk to us about hydric soils for twenty minutes straight and not even show any signs of discomfort, while the rest of us are standing there waving our arms around like monsters. And no, he is not wearing mosquito repellent.

I took Joe in to see Dr. Krupka about three weeks ago because his eye still hasn't gotten any better. I guess he doesn't really know what's wrong with his eye, but he doesn't think it's anything to worry about, it's just cosmetic at this point. It's not bacterial, not viral, not parasitic, who knows what it is. I also talked to Krupka about Joe's poop. You see, Joe has a lot of urine in his poop, and I mean a lot. He didn't like the sound of that, so we had some blood work sent away to check for any kidney, liver, etc. problems.

Well I finally talked to Krupka again this past week, and everything in Joe's blood work looks normal except for his albumin levels. Albumin is a blood protein, so this means that either Joe isn't getting enough, or he's losing too much. Sometimes it can be nutritional, but Krupka said that since he's on a very good diet, that he's pretty sure Joe's getting enough protein (he even gained 2 grams, yay!). His liver and kidneys also seem to be fine, the blood work would have shown otherwise. So he had been talking to some other avian vets, and has come to the conclusion that it's very possibly that Joe has intestinal lymphoma. In fact, he said he thinks Joe does have it. The only way to test for this though is to do a biopsy, and he said that even if it did come back positive, that there's no way he would do chemotherapy on a 25+ year old bird (who is only supposed to live to be 30).

I'm not sure whether I should really believe that he has cancer, but either way Joe is probably only going to live a couple more years. So nothing has really changed I guess, Joe is actually more active than I've ever seen him lately. I was brave enough to bring him downstairs (the cat's domain) and RolyPoly shows no interest in him at all! In fact, if I let Joe down on the floor he chases after RolyPoly, and she hides from him! It's hilarious. Joe gets down real low to the ground and runs as fast as he can at her, beak wide open.

But anyway. I put up some photos of Joe enjoying his downstairs time, including some bath time photos. They should be towards the end of the flock set.

About a month ago I gave Joe a small Happy Hut™ that the cockatiels and the budgies clearly rejected (it hung in one of their cages for at least a month and they wouldn't even go near it). So I hung it next to Joe's favorite perch and he immediately took to it. He absolutely loves it, it's like his girlfriend. He probably spends 70% of his day preening it and snuggling up next to it. Seeing that it is a small Happy Hut, there's no way Joe could actually get inside of it. And even if it was big enough, I know he would not get inside of it if I just hung it on the side of his cage. You see, Joe has very specific paths that he takes in his cage: One is climbing down the rope perch from his favorite perch to either the door of the cage or a wooden perch that spans the width of the cage, and the other is just walking along the wooden perch to get to his food and water bowls. Joe never climbs all over the bars of the cage, and he is probably the first bird I've ever met who does not do this. I've tried to get him to climb over to the other perches and toys in his cage, but he won't do it. He has his paths, and he's sticking to them. But either way, because of this, there's not really a way he could get into a Happy Hut unless it was directly in the line of one of his paths, which I would not block.

Until yesterday. I bought Joe a medium Happy Hut (it doesn't seem like they even make a large one) and hung it by one of the perches he never visits, thinking that maybe it would entice him to move over there. But he didn't touch it, he seemed content with his first hut. A few hours later I took the new hut out and hung it from one of the bars on his playgym (the top of his cage), but he still didn't seem to show any interest in it. Later on, I went upstairs to wake Kory up for work, and what did I see? Joe's little butt sticking out of the new Happy Hut! I was so excited for him and as soon as he heard me going crazy, he quickly backed out of his hut and came over to tell me how happy he was to have a nice snuggly little cave that he could actually get into. After I was done being excited, Joe went back into his hut and let me take a few pictures of his silly butt sticking out.

If you look at the photo on this page that I linked earlier, the cockatiel is completely in the Happy Hut, and if you look at the picture above, you can see that Joe does not fit all that well into his hut. Looks like Kory will have to sew him a bigger and better cave!